"Nature ...something to be cherished and lived within." -- sea change in human thinking

A key U.N. report on biodiversity will recommend massive economic changes like company fines to help save species and protect the natural world, the Guardian reports.

The study will argue that the economic case for global action to protect biodiversity is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, according to the newspaper.

The report, entitled "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity" (TEEB), was launched by Brussels in 2007 with the support of the U.N. Environment Program, after G8 and major emerging economies called for a global study.

If nature is not factored into the global economic system, then the environment will become more fragile and exposed to external shocks, placing human lives and the world economy in jeopardy, it will argue.

The TEEB report will also recommend that companies are fined and taxed for over-exploitation of the natural world, with strict limits imposed on what they can take from the environment, according to the paper.

Alongside financial results, businesses and governments should also be asked to provide accounts for their use of natural and human resources.

And communities should be paid to preserve natural environments rather than deplete them.

The Guardian's report, published on the U.N.'s International Day for Biological Diversity, added that the U.N. will also recommend reforming state subsidies for certain industries, like energy, farming, fishing, and transport.

The TEEB study will also warn that one-third of the world's natural habitats have been damaged by humans.

The total value of "natural goods and services" like pollination, medicines, fertile soil, clean air, and water will be around 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the species and natural habitats which provide them.

"We need a sea change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature," said Indian economist and report author Pavan Sukhdev, cited by the Guardian.

Sukhdev, head of the U.N. Environment Program's green economy initiative, also appealed for nature to be regarded "not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within."

U.N. study calls for economic changes to save biodiversity Grist